Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-44 Book

Robert O. Paxton's classic study utilizes captured German archives and other contemporary materials to construct a strong and disturbing account of the Vichy period. Now in print once again, 'Vichy France' demonstrates how, in the interests of stability, national feeling favored collaboration with the German-controlled regime. 'Those who cling to the social order above all,' writes Paxton,' may do so by self-interest or merely by inertia. In either case, they know more clearly what they are against than what they are for.' According to Paxton, Vichy's internal project...replacing the cosmopolitan and liberatarian Republic by an authoritarian, homogeneous, corporatist state...was revenge against the Popular Front more than accommodation to some Nazi blueprint. Vichy's external project...keeping France and the French Empire out of the fighting...was reaction against France's futile bloodletting of 1914-18 and the feared post-war revolution more than obedience to some Hitlerian demand for collaboration. It was Petain who wanted collaboration; Hitler wanted only booty.Read More